


Always Winter

by aljohnson, PhryneFicathon



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post Season 3, Romance, Singapore, the rusty plane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-02-26 07:37:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13231029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aljohnson/pseuds/aljohnson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhryneFicathon/pseuds/PhryneFicathon
Summary: A short, hopefully sweet reunion fic. Prompt: “And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.” --JRR Tolkien





	Always Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eara/gifts).



> Many thanks to Aljohnson for stepping in as an angel writer. --Fire_Sign, ficathon moderator

She was chasing winter. The cold, the dark, the long nights and short days. Winter had been drawing to an end in Melbourne. The worst of the misty mornings and drizzle had been behind her. And she had stood on a strip of freshly mown grass, and baited Jack Robinson into finally kissing her. He had left his run very, very late. And then she had teased, and he had deflected, and she had run off back to the plane to whisk her father back to her mother’s care in England. 

As she reached Calcutta she had come to the realisation that she was flying back into the dark. Telegrams had been sent to both England and Australia. Her mother knew they were on their way. She hoped it was enough. If not, then inevitably one of her parents would be returning to Australia with her. She shuddered slightly at the thought – either of them in close proximity to her for too long made her uneasy. And it would place a serious obstacle in the way of her and Jack.

‘Her and Jack’. The dubious grammar aside, when had that started to become something that occupied her thoughts? She shook her head and drained the last of her whisky as she rose from the armchair in the hotel bar. 

As she lay in bed, she recalled the telegrams which had already passed between Jack and her. His had come first. Thence had followed a series of messages between them. Jack was to follow her… metaphorically. The missives had requested that she should, if at all possible, and if not too inconvenient, visit various suggested locations, take photographs with her portable camera, and share the resultant images with him on her return. Assuming she intended, eventually, to return? She did. She did intend to return. And as soon as ever it was possible.

*********************

At Croydon, her mother had been delighted to greet Henry as he had practically staggered from the plane after it had bumped along the tarmac strip. Phryne had busied herself with post-flight checks and flirting with the ground staff. But nothing had been able to quite mask her father’s synthetic apologies as his voice carried into the hangar.

*******************

He was a careful man. A cautious man. A man who, since the war, had plotted every course of his life before taking any action. The last rash action he had taken had been to join up, which had turned into four years of folly, mud and horror. He had returned determined never to make the same mistake again – never to rush in, and never to be swayed by the crowd. His joining of the strike of ’23 had not, as suggested by some others, been a rash action, spurred on by his fellow officers, but a considered response to circumstances as they had been. It had been unfair, to him, those who had gone before him, and those who would come after him. It was a stand for justice, even if it was against the law. 

When Phryne Fisher had swept into his life, a whirlwind in floaty material and with an irreverence for the law, he had been forced to plan more quickly than he had since those four years of hell. Considered and cautious still, but required to respond with more speed than he had allowed himself to become used to. It was like she had set a fire under him, and in the year he had known her, he had discovered, to his surprise, that he liked the way she made him react – to the world around him, to his cases, to his fellow officers, and even how he thought about himself. 

But he could not follow her. Even with the considerable amount of leave he was due, it was not enough to follow her, to join her, to spend an extended amount of time with her. And he did not want her to think he was trying to trap her in any way; to make her think he was trying to restrict her. He would not be as daring as she would, and he felt that he would prefer to see the world through her eyes, rather than restrict what she would see if he was with her, tying her to the ground.

*************************

Her father, obviously, had gone and delayed matters. The crash on Wall Street had happened, and his finances had required ‘rearrangement’. Significant and severe rearrangement. Phryne had been forced to bluntly warn off a seeming flotilla of ‘carpet baggers’ and ‘stockbrokers’ all offering miracle returns. It seemed as if everyone was reacting as if they had lost their minds. Chaos abounded and in the end Phryne had been forced to place assets in her mother’s name – much to her father’s displeasure. Guy had very strict instructions to monitor her parents’ comings and goings and to telegraph her instantly if anything seemed remiss. Setting a rat to catch a rat, as it were. 

The longer she had stayed in London, the colder, the darker, the damper the weather had become. And the more miserable she had felt. 

She missed Australia. She missed the sun and light and warmth. She missed Dot and Mac and The Adventuresses. She missed Jack. No! No, she did not! Phryne Fisher did not miss any man. Not even if they were teetering on the brink, on the edge of becoming… something. The delicious flirting, the banter, the way he looked at her – respect and admiration and just a hint of blazing passion. Perhaps, it wasn’t that he was *any* man, perhaps it was the specific man? Perhaps it was allowed to miss Jack Robinson? 

***************

And that was how she came to find herself in the lounge bar of The Raffles Hotel in Singapore, on her way home. She’d sent a telegram, from Alexandria. She’d made a joke about Anthony conquering worlds. It was difficult to be witty and flirty and aloof when each character had a cost. 

She had become used to his responses: warm and witty and always so concise. She could imagine him, sitting in his office, drafting and redrafting and considering, and no doubt calculating the cost. She wondered how long it took him to reduce his head full of words to so few? It had been a surprise to land in Aden and not be met by a reply. She was not disappointed. Not at all. And now, in Singapore, so close to home, but still with so far to go, she was quite definitely not upset that there was still nothing from him. It was not as if she had missed him, was missing him, had been hoping for a reply that indicated how very much he anticipated her return… Phryne Fisher did not miss any man; she reminded herself as she rose from her chair and wandered out to the balcony. 

“No telescopes to gaze at the stars with here.”

Now she was losing her mind. Random men on hotel balconies were beginning to sound like him. She sighed, preparing her dismissal. As she turned and looked in the direction of the voice, her retort flew from her mind. 

“Jack?” It came out as a question. She wished it hadn’t.

“Miss Fisher.”

There was that smile. The one that came with the tiny smirk. She’d last seen it at the airstrip, just after he’d kissed her. She regained her composure.

“It’s far too early in the day, Inspector, for there to be any stars worth gazing at.”

“And is there any chance that I can convince you to wait here long enough for there to be stars worth looking at? Or perhaps one of the many men out here in the whole world will be joining you shortly?”

That earned him a raised eyebrow.

“Currently, Inspector Robinson, I find myself quite alone. Do please join me.”

Jack nodded and stepped over to the stone balustrade, leaning on it casually.

“Perhaps, Miss Fisher, I could tempt you with a glass of champagne?” That earned him a further raised eyebrow and a tilt of her head in acquiescence. Jack turned his head towards the bar and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

A waiter appeared with a bottle of champagne, an ice bucket and two glasses on a silver tray. 

“Are we celebrating Jack?”

“I hope we are, Miss Fisher. All the way to England, in a plane. A slightly rusty plane, if you don’t mind my saying so. And in merely four weeks. That’s an achievement which certainly merits celebrating. And as there have been no reports in the paper, I can only surmise that you managed not to kill your father?”

“I did, manage not to kill him, that is. He is my mother’s problem now. But what are you doing here?”

“Well, you did say there was a whole world out here. I thought I should come and see one small corner of it.”

“Are you on a case?”

“No, Phryne. I came to see you. I left just after I received your telegram from Alexandria.”

He so rarely used her given name, and so rarely when there wasn’t any heightened tension. It gave her a moment of pause.

“Assuming you’d like to spend time with me?” There was the merest hint of a wobble in his voice. The cough as he cleared his throat betrayed him too. 

Jack had come all this way, for her. She had come all this way – across the world and almost back again. For him? Perhaps. But as much for herself. And somewhere along the way, Jack had become someone she thought about a lot. Maybe, perhaps, it was all right for her to allow a man, not just any man, but a man like Jack Robinson, into her life and her heart. 

“I think, Jack, that spending time with you would be something I would like, very much.”

Phryne lifted her glass of champagne to chink against Jack’s. 

The setting sun flared momentarily as dusk began to fall. It might be winter where she was heading, but her heart felt as warm as the summer sun. 


End file.
